It's also about all the things that can go wrong when the comfortable world of technical civilization is left behind.

I'm telling you that any mention of past technical civilizations is below the plausible background level.

I'd never believe they were capable of developing a technical civilization.

We might be laughably far off in guessing how a very different technical civilization would communicate.

Worlds with technical civilizations just beginning to emerge must be spectacularly rare.

No other world is yet known to harbor even a microbe, much less a technical civilization.

They would not know for another few centuries that a technical civilization has emerged on Earth.

How have the Dirdir managed to create and coordinate a technical civilization?

For example, it could be both that life is rare, and technical civilizations are short lived, or many other combinations of the explanations below.

Over what seemed to Kirk an enormous period of time they had developed a technical civilization, including limited spaceflight.